SSDs are great for boot drives and program installs. For data storage, it can still be expensive and you must be religious about backing up. (A good idea whether using standard HDD or SSD)

Saw someone bash SandForce. The company does produce good products and now are in many of the lower priced drives. There were issues when the SF-2281 chip was released. Improper firmware was often the culprit. Problems are less of a concern with recent implementations using the chip.

SandForce uses a compression and encryption routine when writing to the drives so compressible data works well with the drives.

Most issues with the SSD tech have been worked out and it is a good time for non-techies to add them to their computers. Even if the bus in the computer cannot take full advantage of the speed of the drive, the drive will maximize the performance of the bus and the computer's abilities. Remember, the storage system of a computer is by far the slowest element in the machine so improvements in this area are immediately apparent.

I am aware that SSD will significantly increase the start up times and read/write times but I have a specific question regarding the the performance of Adobe CS6, Lightroom 4.4, Final Cut Pro etc, with an SSD:I currently have a Mac Book Pro Mid 2010 (OSX 10.8.3) with 16 GB DDR 3 RAM, 750GB HDD, 2.9 GHz intel Core i7 processor, and all of the above programs work perfectly, I have no issue at all, but what I want to know is will upgrading to an SSD will have a significant performance improvement after those programs have been launched?

It is a little like a DSLR, there are many components that make it better.

I am no fan of anything "Apple" and I recommend the high end Lenovo or Dell machines for heavy image, engineering apps and HD video etc.

That aside, it will give you a boost upgrading to an SSD if all the components are correctly in place and aligned. The CPU plays a major part, the video card again is extremely important, your RAM and the type of RAM etc. Plus a lot of people forget the bus, if you connect an SSD to a SATA 2 bus then performance will be limited. I think 3 (GB/s) is the latest (not sure though), so no matter what the SSD claims is the read/write speed if your laptop cannot handle those speeds you just won't get them

My laptop currently has two SSDs in it and could have four, but for me the main advantage with SSD (apart from the speed) is how quiet they are. Really makes a difference to your day if you work somewhere very quiet.

So would I recommend an SSD, definitely. Do I recommend upgrading a current laptop from a 750GB spin drive with all the headaches that that entails? That is the major question imho. Personally, I probably would wait until you want to upgrade your entire laptop. But if you are comfortable technically moving from a 750GB spin to a SSD then why not.

Thanks for your reply ... unfortunately it does not answer my question. My question is very specific, i.e. "will upgrading to an SSD have a significant performance improvement specifically for CS6, LR 4.4 & Final Cut Pro, after they have been launched?I also use a Dell Alienware Mx14 (2012 version Core i7) which has a dedicated graphic card, yet the MacBook Pro outperforms but my question, about SSD replacment, remains the same for either systems.

It will help with program start up but after the program starts for the most part everything is in your RAM. So for the most part no additional help after start up. Write should be faster so that may be the only noticeable increase.

Except, say you import a handful of 5Dmk3 raws into photoshop. That alone will likely exceed your memory, and you'll be pushed into virtual memory. Having a faster drive setup (be it 6GB/s SATA3 drives with or without striped or mirrored arrays) will be better than having a slower drive setup (say SATA2 spinning drives).

A SSD will improve performance not only when opening applications, but when working with the files. This is readily apparent when using plugins like Nik of OnOne software. You will save a lot of cumulative time with a SSD.

I am aware that SSD will significantly increase the start up times and read/write times but I have a specific question regarding the the performance of Adobe CS6, Lightroom 4.4, Final Cut Pro etc, with an SSD:I currently have a Mac Book Pro Mid 2010 (OSX 10.8.3) with 16 GB DDR 3 RAM, 750GB HDD, 2.9 GHz intel Core i7 processor, and all of the above programs work perfectly, I have no issue at all, but what I want to know is will upgrading to an SSD will have a significant performance improvement after those programs have been launched?

It is a little like a DSLR, there are many components that make it better.

I am no fan of anything "Apple" and I recommend the high end Lenovo or Dell machines for heavy image, engineering apps and HD video etc.

That aside, it will give you a boost upgrading to an SSD if all the components are correctly in place and aligned. The CPU plays a major part, the video card again is extremely important, your RAM and the type of RAM etc. Plus a lot of people forget the bus, if you connect an SSD to a SATA 2 bus then performance will be limited. I think 3 (GB/s) is the latest (not sure though), so no matter what the SSD claims is the read/write speed if your laptop cannot handle those speeds you just won't get them

My laptop currently has two SSDs in it and could have four, but for me the main advantage with SSD (apart from the speed) is how quiet they are. Really makes a difference to your day if you work somewhere very quiet.

So would I recommend an SSD, definitely. Do I recommend upgrading a current laptop from a 750GB spin drive with all the headaches that that entails? That is the major question imho. Personally, I probably would wait until you want to upgrade your entire laptop. But if you are comfortable technically moving from a 750GB spin to a SSD then why not.

Thanks for your reply ... unfortunately it does not answer my question. My question is very specific, i.e. "will upgrading to an SSD have a significant performance improvement specifically for CS6, LR 4.4 & Final Cut Pro, after they have been launched?I also use a Dell Alienware Mx14 (2012 version Core i7) which has a dedicated graphic card, yet the MacBook Pro outperforms but my question, about SSD replacment, remains the same for either systems.

Your Alienware is nice but it is not the top end Dell or Lenovo I was talking about, they are different beasts entirely. Anyway, my answer does answer your question. Which bit are you unclear of? I say, in extremely brief summary of what I wrote before, that it depends on numerous factors not just the SSD.

I see some good points, but buying a completely new computer doesn't solve or directly answer the OP. I'm sure he or she needs help with his or her existing equipment. I own both low to high end Apple imac and macbook pros and top of the line Dell computers (both XPS laptop and XPS desktop from when I used to work for Dell), as well as a computer built from scratch. By upgrading my old 2009 macbook pro with an SSD I noticed improvements in both the OS and applications for startup. Not so much in final cut and adobe premiere overall performance but it seems that there are less spinning beach balls overall. I do a lot of onsite editing for wedding clients so any boost in performance is very much welcome. I'd even go as close to saying, without scientific testing, that the transcode speed has increased by about 10%. Since I only have 3-4 hours total to cut a wedding video, shaving off about 20 minutes, not including the time saved by being more stable, has helped a lot. Now, by putting an SSD in my high end Dell, I have noticed similar performance, even a little bit better video encoding performance. I have a hybrid drive... momentus XT which I installed on my iMac, and it also performs better than the stock drive but not as much as I expected. Little things like zipping files seem faster. I will say this though, with the right hardware, editing a music video styled project is extremely more efficient with Final Cut X compared to other NLEs on high end systems, which isn't supposed to be compatible with windows.... And when it's installed by unsupported methods, it doesn't work as well Been there, done that.

If you are using a desktop or a 17" laptop with 2 drive bays (Yeah baby!) it's best to use a fast SSD as a boot / OS/Apps drive and a slower but larger mechanical drive for data. I'm currently using a Vertex III 240gb as my C: and a Western Digital caviar blue 1 TB for my data in a Dell XPS17....and it rocks. Win7 64bit, Quad core I7 and 16gb Ram...it flies through Lightroom Photoshop. With Lightroom, I've set the database and previews to the SSD but the RAW files are stored on the 1TB drive. According to Adobe, there is no performance gain in putting your RAWs on the SSD. And yes...it rocks.

For a lower $/GB cost, the Seagate Momentus XT drives are everything they claim to be. They're not up to SSD levels, but for most work they're quite good and still head and shoulders above just a straight mechanical drive.

240GB Crucial M500 with firmware MU03 on a 2010 13-inch Macbook Pro with Superdrive through SATA 3Gb/s (300MB/s) interface. Clean install of 10.9.1 + other updates. TRIM not enabled as it was recommended by a Crucial employee that the built-in Garbage Collecting is sufficient.

I was all set to upgrade my 2009 Mac Book to SSD and RAM, but for not much more ($500) I was able to buy 2012 Mac Air with the SSD, double the RAM as well as newer generation, better screen, and the seller through in an external 500 Mb external HDD. It opened my eyes to the used market. It may not be the speed demon I was dreaming about when I looked at the website, but the key is that it is no longer a dream! Plus my son was the lucky recipient of a computer that wasn't great for Aperture/LR, but far better than he had. If what you have is useful to someone else (or yourself in other applications), the upgrade money might be better spent elsewhere.

... but enough of this SSD talk ... the subject title also refers to, (in fact starts with) "A chicken in every pot" (which is the main reason I read this thread), but I am very disappointed to note that after 3 pages of comments & 5999 hits (to this thread) no one is talking about the chicken in the pot.